Wednesday, July 7, 2010

On writing (and not vomiting on the way to work)

Is it just me, or does everyone feeling like heaving up their breakfast when they hit the road to get to their job? I felt awful this morning just because I dreaded going to work, and it took just about everything I had to keep from turning my car around and heading back home, which left me brimming with energy for the day ahead, of course. After my stomach settled, I started thinking about how I need to put more time toward writing if I ever want to leave behind jobs like the one I have for good. Then I thought about why I started writing in the first place. I’ve always been compelled to write, and though I have not had much confidence in my writing or spent time writing on a consistent basis until the past year or so, the desire to write has always sat upon the couch in the living room of my mind, stinking up the place with ideas.

That has been my experience, but is it like that for all writers? Why do others write? Do they do it because they feel the need to do so, or are they doing it for some far-off money-making potential? Do they write to escape reality? Do they do it to work toward breaking free from a life with which they’re unhappy? The likelihood that there are far more reasons than I am able to generate is high. I suppose the same goes for reasons that anyone does anything.

Perhaps now is as good of a time as any to think about why you do what you do, whether it’s your job, your creative work, or anything else. If you’re not happy with something, start taking even small steps toward changing or eliminating it from your life. There’s no reason tomorrow can’t be the day you’ll remember as the day that everything changed.

I started writing again after giving up it up for eight years because I felt like if I didn’t start writing again I might die. And I’m not being melodramatic, I really did feel that strongly about it. I hated myself, I hated my life, I hated the uncontrollable way I had of saying weird shit to people all the time. I hated the crazy things I saw in my head that I had no other home for. Everything changed when I started writing again. Suddenly I saw that everything that I thought was so horrible and weird about me before fit perfectly into the world when I used it in my writing. And since then everything has kept changing. Now there’s no one I’d rather be than me.